Q & A with Keith Jones
By Patrick Hunter
Last Updated:4:22 PM EST 4/22/09 Section: News
Keith Jones, who currently teaches classical studies at Fisher, shares his story.
Q: What do you teach?
A: I have a day job, where I teach at Allendale Columbia, a prep school in town, and I teach Latin and history and Greek, on occasion. Then, occasionally, I teach here at Fisher. I've taught the same course here, now, three times, Love in the Ancient World. This is an effort to look at Pre-Christian type of love and desire.
It's all very different from modern notions. Kids are often surprised to hear that all those weird, bizarre perversions that they thought were phenomena of the 21st Century- you find them in 400 B.C. I mean, homosexuality, homosexual practices, fetishism, all these things. You find analogs in ancient myth to them.
Let me give you an example: The myth of Pygmalion. Here we have a guy that doesn't like women, thinks they have cooties, [and] shuns their company. And so, what does he do? He ends up building a life-size "love doll" out of ivory, and subsequently falls in love with it and starts sleeping with it, putting clothing on it, talking to it. And people read this and think, 'This guy's so bizarre.'
Then you could compare that today to say a very similar cultural phenomenon, the six or seven thousand dollar "love-dolls," that are on the market now.... And what you see in both cases, underlying this big notion of the perfect woman is misogyny.
And I think that there are several other myths like that where you see a modern equivalent to some ancient story.
Q: What did you do before you came to Fisher?
A: My first job was playing guitar in a rock'n'roll band. I was about 17 years old… three-cord rock'n'roll, AC/DC, The Rolling Stones. I'm from the Midwest. I'm from Illinois, a town called Crete, which is wonderful foreshadowing. We'd get forty dollars a night. I mean, the whole band would get forty dollars a night, and I decided not to make a career out of that.
I probably always presumed I was going to be some kind of teacher. That runs in my family.
Q: What do you teach?
A: I have a day job, where I teach at Allendale Columbia, a prep school in town, and I teach Latin and history and Greek, on occasion. Then, occasionally, I teach here at Fisher. I've taught the same course here, now, three times, Love in the Ancient World. This is an effort to look at Pre-Christian type of love and desire.
It's all very different from modern notions. Kids are often surprised to hear that all those weird, bizarre perversions that they thought were phenomena of the 21st Century- you find them in 400 B.C. I mean, homosexuality, homosexual practices, fetishism, all these things. You find analogs in ancient myth to them.
Let me give you an example: The myth of Pygmalion. Here we have a guy that doesn't like women, thinks they have cooties, [and] shuns their company. And so, what does he do? He ends up building a life-size "love doll" out of ivory, and subsequently falls in love with it and starts sleeping with it, putting clothing on it, talking to it. And people read this and think, 'This guy's so bizarre.'
Then you could compare that today to say a very similar cultural phenomenon, the six or seven thousand dollar "love-dolls," that are on the market now.... And what you see in both cases, underlying this big notion of the perfect woman is misogyny.
And I think that there are several other myths like that where you see a modern equivalent to some ancient story.
Q: What did you do before you came to Fisher?
A: My first job was playing guitar in a rock'n'roll band. I was about 17 years old… three-cord rock'n'roll, AC/DC, The Rolling Stones. I'm from the Midwest. I'm from Illinois, a town called Crete, which is wonderful foreshadowing. We'd get forty dollars a night. I mean, the whole band would get forty dollars a night, and I decided not to make a career out of that.
I probably always presumed I was going to be some kind of teacher. That runs in my family.
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